Member-only story
Most of This Won’t Matter to You in the Long Run
How looking at what you were doing on this day a year ago will give you perspective on right now
Tuesday, July 14, 2020, was rough. My family’s usual childcare wasn’t available. The baby was on a nap strike. The longest stretch of uninterrupted time I got was in the minivan at night in my driveway with my laptop.
On days like that one, it can be easy to wallow in frustration. But then, sitting in the minivan, I tried a thought experiment: What, exactly, was I doing on this date a year ago? What was I frustrated about and worried about then?
Well, I knew where I was on July 14, 2019: Cape May, New Jersey, with my family. Thinking back, I remembered eating lobster outside and hiking to the beach through a nature preserve full of butterflies — an exquisite summer day.
But then I looked at my time log. I should note here that I do have an actual record of what I’ve done on past dates. I began tracking my time continuously in April 2015, and I now have more than five years of half-hour-by-half-hour data.
